…to the chagrin of true arbiters of taste

Main menu

Tag Archives: david letterman

Thanks to Dani Tippman from the Whitley County Historical Society for this coverage of the Blue Bell Lofts Grand Opening! Dani was unable to attend the ribbon-cutting, but watched and enjoyed my mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s speech on video. Dani wanted to include this story in the Whitley County Historial Bulletin. That is really a special treat, as my mom wrote a piece in 1987 on the history of the facility that also appeared in The Bulletin and was used extensively in Commonwealth’s research for this transformative project – you can read that piece here.

My mom did want to note that in the excitement of the day there were a couple of items she misstated and would like to correct: “The corrections would be 50 layers of denim which I had mis-stated….and that the plant was called Blue Bell in 1943 after several name changes. When in another building behind the bowling alley, it was called Globe-Superior…becoming Blue Bell-Globe when Globe-Superior was bought out. From 1936, it was called Blue Bell-Globe until just the Blue Bell name in ’43. At one point down south after Big Ben and Blue Bell merged the company was called Blue Bell Overall Company from 1930 until 1936, when it became Blue Bell-Globe and, finally – as I wrote – in 1943, BLUE BELL, INC. Thus, Blue Bell affiliation provided the final lasting name change to simply Blue Bell one year after my dad Roy Duncan arrived. First big acquisition after the name change was CASEY JONES!” Enjoy!

BONUS: From 1987, The Post and Mail’s coverage of Susie’s original Blue Bell article in The Bulletin

Do you find reading this name to yourself is a little amusing? Bet your lips puckered without your realizing it. Try saying it aloud; bet you can’t without having a little fun with it. At A2CT’s hilarious production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre this weekend, you can think it, say it, sing it, even stand up and shout it at the top of your lungs and you will be in good company. It is encouraged and it is satisfying, much like the performance that surrounds it. It’s no wonder this interactive Rupert Holmes musical won several Tony Awards. It’s that fun.

As the real story goes, The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel written by Charles Dickens, who died before completing it, leaving the explanation of the title character’s mysterious disappearance unresolved. However, in the musical, we, the audience, get to…

The musical concerns a troupe of players at an English Music Hall putting on a musical production of Charles Dickens’ last novel which, alas, he died before completing. It is up to the audience to vote and decide who the murderer, detective, and the evenings lovers will be. Every performance features a different ending based on the audience vote, and is an evening of smartly written, very funny entertainment for all ages. Drood won 5 Tony Winning and 9 Drama Desk awards in 1986, and recently had a revival on Broadway which garnered raves. The musical was originally produced by the Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Festival in New York’s Central Park. Parents should be aware that there is a light smattering of late 1800’s colorful British language.

All performers in the 19-member cast play dual roles — those of performers at the Music Hall, and the characters they become “on stage” for the staging of the novel. Jared Hoffert is the evening’s Chairperson. Drood (a male impersonator) is played by Vanessa Banister. Evil Jasper is played by Roy Sexton. Love interest Rosa Bud is played by Kimberly Elliott. Brother/sister Neville and Helena are played by Brandon Cave and Becca Nowak. Brodie Brockie plays the Reverend Crisparkle, Michael Cicirelli is Bazzard, and Alisa Mutchler Bauer plays the mysterious Princess Puffer while Durdles is played by Jimmy Dee Arnold. The cast is rounded out by Peter Dannug, Sarah Sweeter, Heather Wing, Julia Fertel, Ashleigh Glass, Chris Joseph, Kari Nilsen and Kelly Wade. There is a mysterious guest appearance by Ch. Brady Cesaro.

Directed by award-winning Ron Baumanis (Bonnie & Clyde, The Wedding Singer, next to normal), musical directed by Daniel Bachelis (who also conducts the full orchestra), and choreographed by Debra Calabrese (Croswell Opera House’s Memphis, In The Heights). Designed by Ron Baumanis, Lighting Design by Thom Johnson, Sound Design by Bob Skon, Costume Design by Molly Borneman, properties designed by Aaron Wade. Produced by Wendy Sielaff.﻿

I couldn’t be prouder of my mom Susie Duncan Sexton. This article is from The Ball State University Honors College alumni magazine. The author Olivia Power captured my mom’s spirit and soul. This is a beauty, and Olivia wove all of the threads of my mom’s life – her writing, her books, her advocacy, her progressive views, her irreverence, her wit – so lovingly and so thoughtfully. I am just tickled to pieces with this. A life richly lived and appropriately, effusively celebrated. This is marvelous!

I’ve ridden the crest of every ill-spirited media wave announcing her imminent cultural demise, her death spiral into irrelevancy, or her controversy-fueled self-immolation.

And, yet, to paraphrase a classic Sondheim tune, popularized by the late, great Elaine Stritch, she’s still here.

Speaking of Sondheim, it was the bizarre confluence of that Broadway vet’s musical output and the white-hot light of Madonna at the peak of her fame in the summer of 1990, working on the Disney-produced, Warren Beatty-directed comic book film Dick Tracy, that cemented my love for the self-professed “Material Girl.”

To be honest, her first two albums Madonna and Like a Virgin set my teeth on edge in their moment (possibly because they were the dog-eared soundtrack for every snooty-pants kid at Memorial Park, a “magnet school” for gifted … and rich … kids, a place where the wheels temporarily fell off my self-esteem wagon). True Blue (her third offering, not counting soundtracks and remix compilations) was a slight improvement (we also moved to another town!), perhaps due to the influence of equally combustible but super-talented Sean Penn in her artistic and personal life. With Like a Prayer, shestarted to pique my interest as Madonna really began to mine the formula of agnosticism, social critique, semi-feminist moxie, and soaring dance-pop melodies that ignited my nascent musical imagination.

But it was the Dick Tracy pseudo-soundtrack I’m Breathless, a forgotten corner of Madonna’s discography (save for its inescapable throbbing uber-hit “Vogue”), that made me a fan for life. I was in Japan for a summer study abroad program sponsored by the U.S. Senate/Japanese government, back when Japan was, well, China to us, threatened as we were by their economic might. The powers-that-be threw a bunch of high school kids on a plane, and, voila, world peace?

I didn’t have a lot of spending money, no internet (obviously) nor smart phones (more obviously), so the touchstone that eased any homesick heartache was an I’m Breathless cassette tape I bought from a Japanese street vendor (I think it was legal) with all the lyrics written in kanji. (In fact, I remain a little foggy on the actual words to “Hanky Panky” to this day). I burned through two Walkmen and a host of AA batteries listening to that album, never skipping a track, but absorbing it all straight through over and over.

After that, Madonna could do no wrong (by me). My self-important, superficially-socially-conscious college days were spent torturing my roommates with repeated listens to Erotica and Bedtime Stories (the campy/naughty “I’m not your b*tch; don’t hang your sh*t on me” era – take that, smart aleck-y David Letterman), and graduate school saw Madge and me mellow a bit as she took on show tunes in the Golden Globe-winning Evita and some mystical new mommy spiritual techno hoo-ha in Ray of Light.

She (and the world) discovered Sacha Baron Cohen and the acid rock/hip hop joys of ten gallon cowboy hats with Music (“Don’t Tell Me” remains a musical/videographic highlight), and, as the 20th Century devolved in the post 9/11 chaos of the “aughts,” Madonna sported a beret and sang political rants about … pilates (?) in American Life, donned a purple/pink leotard for some Confessions on the Dance Floor, suckered us in with some poptacular Hard Candy, and left me woozy from too much MDNA.

Which brings us to the latest offering from our imperious Queen of Pop: Rebel Heart. Much has been made of the disastrous (or canny?) PR debacle leading up to her 13th (!) studio album’s release (she doesn’t count I’m Breathless in that tally for some reason – BIG mistake. HUGE.). There were numerous leaks of tracks in various degrees of completion; Madonna got a little zany with the Instagram; she had a wardrobe malfunction (no, Ms. Jackson, not that kind) that involved a ridiculously long cape and an even ridiculously longer flight of stairs; and so on. Yet, here we are at the finish line, with a more-or-less completed album, filled to the brim (19 tracks on the deluxe edition and 25 on the super-deluxe!) with potential hits (and misses).

By the way, let’s not forget Madge invented strategic “wardrobe malfunction,” in a now iconic performance from the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards, when she lost a shoe or something and, consequently, started writhing around on the stage in a white wedding dress while warbling “Like a Virgin.”

So, with this exhaustively self-indulgent preamble ended, how is the Rebel Heart album? It’s good, and it may even be classic, but like all Madonna albums, it is wildly uneven with some spectacularly transporting hooks and melodies, a healthy dose of sass, and some head smackingly cringe-worthy lyrics. What many critics now hail as a masterpiece (Erotica) was in its day (1992!) similarly received – an overlong mish-mash of dance, pop, balladry that ran the gamut from sincerely poignant to sincerely filthy to sincerely odd. Rebel Heart feels like a bookend to that now legendary compilation.

Rebel Heart‘s strongest moments (consistent with Madonna’s track record) marry heartache, petulance, and swirling disco, from the soaring, gospel-tinged first single “Living for Love” to upcoming single “Ghosttown,” a crunchy, ominous, totally dance-able ode to isolation/devotion. The album’s sillier moments work for me as well, including the anti-misogyny, reggae-lite screed “Unapologetic B*tch” to the similarly titled yet totally antithetical party anthem “B*tch, I’m Madonna” (with a great guest rhyme from most-likely-to-inherit-the-crown Nicki Minaj).

Madonna crashes the gates again of her own sexual minstrelsy with a clutch of tracks that veer from the obscene to the perverse (“Body Shop,” “Holy Water,” “Best Night,” and the funniest of the bunch “S.E.X.”). At first listen to these, I wanted to jump out of my skin as there is minimal effort for metaphor but maximal effort for shock and awe. Yet, as I gave them a second listen (still not liking them much), I realized that Madonna’s tongue was firmly in cheek (sounds kinda like one of her lyrics, actually), so these four may grow on me … like a fungus.

Gone are any aspirations to play in the bass-thumping pop sandbox of the Lady Gagas or Katy Perrys of the world (though I think those critiques have been greatly overstated) as Madonna happily reintroduces ballads to her repertoire, standouts being the shimmering “Messiah” (where religion becomes a clever proxy for humanistic self-actualization), caustic “HeartBreakCity” (I do love when Madonna gives two-timing, preening dudes a dressing down), and the capstone strum-and-drang of title track “Rebel Heart.”

It is this last number (inexplicably only available on the deluxe edition) that makes the entire nearly 90 minute running time worth the journey. With this ditty, Madonna offers arguably her most revelatory (and witty) lyrics – Madonna the songwriter is often overshadowed by Madonna the showman, but this track wraps the thesis of Rebel Heart (the album) with a heart-rending bow:

I lived my life like a masochist
Hearing my father say: “Told you so, told you so”
“Why can’t you be like the other girls?”
I said: “Oh no, that’s not me and I don’t think that it’ll ever be”

Thought I belonged to a different tribe
Walking alone
Never satisfied, satisfied
Tried to fit in but it wasn’t me,
I said: “Oh no, I want more, that’s not what I’m looking for”

And you’ve succeeded, Ms. Ciccone. Keep up the fine work, Madonna – looking forward to keeping you as the primary soundtrack to my ever-evolving life …
____________________________

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)